That said, whoever it was over at Sprint who though WiMAX had a chance in hell of succeeding was delusional. LTE just had so much more support industry wide that it was inevitable that WiMAX would fall behind, despite the early start they had.

" Softbank's newly created U.S. subsidiary New Sprint will buy $3.1 billion in old Sprint convertible bonds to start. After shareholders and regulators approve the proposed deal, Softbank will then buy $4.9 billion in New Sprint shares. The two steps together represent the $8 billion infusion directly into Sprint.

On top of that, 55 percent of existing Sprint shares would be exchanged for $7.30 per share in cash, representing a further $12.1 billion."

If the shares will be worth $7.30 by mid-2013, why is the stock only trading at $5.73? The $7.30 price is 25% above what it's going for now. I would think the stock price would get close to the $7.30 number... Am I looking at this the wrong way? Or is it a buying opportunity?

A Japanese guy who was educated in the West? Check.A businessman who likes daring challenges compare to other typical Japanese business leaders? Check.American-friendly? Check.Owns a sports team in Japan? Check.Has a great insight on the global renewable energy industry? Check.

bsharitt:Mad_Radhu: Hey, at least they are ahead of T-Mobile in that respect.

But at least T-Mobile has a decent 3G network to fall back to(it may even still be faster than Sprint's initial LTE). I think Sprint's EVDO can be as slow as EDGE much of the time.

HSPA+ is also good in terms of speed and battery life, I've heard from LTE users that their batteries get sucked dry rather fast.

Left Sprint for T-Mobile a few months ago, today is the only day where my phone isn't zippy fast, and so far their CS has been good (Then again Sprint's was when I first signed up with them too...) Just wish I got more than 2g in the restroom at work...

Sprint ION.Failed merger with MCI WorldCom.Acquisition of Nextel only to shut down their network 4 years later.Sprint WIMAX.Years of industry worst customer service on Sprint PCS.Spending $700 million on a HQ building that they still can't fill.Holding out on the Storm and the Pre to challenge the iPhone.

Bonehead move after bonehead move, from Esrey to Forsee to Hesse, they've all been trying for years to dump this shiatpile of a company off to the highest bidder for years. Has to rank up there with one of the worst run telecoms in the business.

Years of industry worst customer service on Sprint PCS. --> And now, very good.

Spending $700 million on a HQ building that they still can't fill. --> Would have been filled except the tech bubble burst. Able to sub-let to other companies, so HQ is not 'empty'. Also not a building, try 20 buildings in 200 acres with 2M sqft of office space.

Holding out on the Storm and the Pre to challenge the iPhone. --> Yeah this was a failure.

Bonehead move after bonehead move, from Esrey to Forsee to Hesse, they've all been trying for years to dump this shiatpile of a company off to the highest bidder for years. Has to rank up there with one of the worst run telecoms in the business.

--> Esrey did a great job in growing Sprint from LD/LT to Wireless. Forsee was a do-nothing idiot that should have stayed at Bell South. Hesse is the best thing to happen to Sprint in a long time. It would have gone bankrupt if not for him.

bsharitt:But at least T-Mobile has a decent 3G network to fall back to(it may even still be faster than Sprint's initial LTE). I think Sprint's EVDO can be as slow as EDGE much of the time.

Really, you mean when a company offers 'all you can eat' the bandwidth gets eaten up? Whodathunkit!

xooxox:--> Esrey did a great job in growing Sprint from LD/LT to Wireless. Forsee was a do-nothing idiot that should have stayed at Bell South. Hesse is the best thing to happen to Sprint in a long time. It would have gone bankrupt if not for him.

Hesse just got finished making the most colossal screw-up of them all (well, almost as bad as flushing $30B on Nextel). He agreed to buy $32B worth of iPhones - whether he could sell them or not. Do you want to buy an iPhone 5 if you aren't one of the lucky few million to be where they have actually gotten LTE to work? Remember, it can't fall back to Wimax - it drops down to EVDO which runs at dialup speeds on Sprint's all-you-can-eat network. That guaranteed iPhone purchase is going to destroy Sprint with or without Softbank's money. Want an iPhone 5 now - get ready to wait at Verizon and AT&T, but Sprint has tons of them at every store.

Also - LTE and Wimax were concurrently launched. In fact, Verizon was trialing LTE in two cities before the first Wimax installation. Sprint just screwed up and didn't back out on Wimax when they had the chance.

Most Sprint customer care is in India - unlike T-Mobile and Verizon that haven't offshored their call centers.

Yes, iDEN was supposed to be shut down in trade for some awesome spectrum that the government was GIVING them due to the iDEN interference issue. And Sprint FARKED that up too. They couldn't shut the network down because all of their sales growth was through Boost which ran on iDEN.

The Sprint campus is about 25% vacant. As in 'shuttered buildings'. About 25% is sublet and the rest is divided between Sprint and Ericsson (which runs their network - yes, Sprint doesn't even operate their own network). Remember, Sprint only has about 8000 employees in the KC metro area and not all of them are sitting in the campus. If you drove past the Sprint campus today, you might think that it was a prison. All the buildings are bunker-like and look the same. Only the clock-tower makes it stand out.